1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lift-off cover assembly for ship barges or the like which includes a plurality of adjacently positioned curved sections and end sections. The cover assembly can be made of a semirigid to rigid lightweight material such as fiberglass reinforced resin and is adapted to be placed on the barge so as to define a storage space thereunder.
2. Discussion of the Background
Related barge covers, such as those manufactured by Proform Corp., Syntechnics, Xenium and others, do not provide the necessary storage space that has recently been desired. Also, these related barge covers do not include adequate provisions for the safety of cargo loading operators who walk on the barge covers.
Additionally, these related barge covers have openings which are not sufficiently wide to permit the adequate loading of cargo and furthermore, include doors on the openings which require that a cargo loading operator walk to the center of the door, unlatch the door, lift the door into position, and then throw the door open by thrusting against the front edge. This procedure requires that the cargo loading operator stand on the slanted portion of the barge cover and leaves the cargo loading operator leaning into the opening and looking down about 18 feet into the barge hopper floor. Also, these doors tended to be randomly placed at varying heights.
Also, the opening action of the doors in these related barge covers causes damage to the doors and the hinges when the doors abut against the top of the barge cover upon opening. That is, the doors on these related barge covers tend to impact along the center and middle of the door upon opening which causes the door to twist and thereby damage the hinges. Therefore, these doors and hinges require replacement upon use.
Also, these related covers often cannot be installed on barges with hopper openings having different dimensions. Although there are standard barge hopper opening sizes, many barges are manufactured with hopper opening sizes different from the standard size. The vast majority of these differently sized barges are close to standard size. Such barges are referred to herein as near-standard. The related covers include weather seals which allow only minor relative movement between adjoining covers and preclude the use of related covers sized for standard barges with near-standard barges. As a result, it is necessary to fabricate covers for near-standard barges (such covers shall be referred to herein as "near-standard covers") using separate molds. This adds to the cost of near-standard covers.